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What is "descriptive"

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
descriptive
adjective
COLLOCATIONS FROM CORPUS
■ ADVERB
as
▪ The title should be as descriptive as possible, and can be up to 60 printing characters long, including spaces.
▪ It should be as descriptive as the number of characters used will allow.
more
▪ It's a useful addition to make to your command centre as the text links will be more descriptive than icons.
purely
▪ Have been growing less and less interested in titles that are other than purely descriptive.
▪ This last category Gumperz describes as somewhat more difficult to specify in purely descriptive terms.
▪ This fact alone suggests that a purely descriptive approach to first degree courses is likely to be unproductive or excruciatingly boring.
▪ These terms are purely descriptive, but they are necessary to cope with observed phenomena, especially in psychopathology.
■ NOUN
account
▪ In Britain two examples of cohort studies provide descriptive accounts of patterns of infant care in urban communities.
▪ It pays most attention to interviews, descriptive accounts, biographies, and autobiographies.
▪ But it also involves a descriptive account of human nature and institutions.
name
▪ The high oil content lending black oats their descriptive name made them a traditional feed for horses.
passage
▪ Little other than isolated records can be established from most of these, although there are some fine descriptive passages.
phrase
▪ Fiona would never jock him off, in racing's descriptive phrase.
▪ Click the mouse on an icon, and a descriptive phrase appears in a box next to the icons.
▪ What is more, proper names are normally introduced into discourse by means of descriptive phrases.
▪ In particular, contingent entities can not be individuated in an absolute sense by any kind of descriptive phrase.
EXAMPLES FROM OTHER ENTRIES
▪ A descriptive listing of 116 bed-and-breakfast inns is available.
▪ The book contains many fine descriptive passages about everyday life in China.
▪ When you write your paragraph, include as many descriptive details as possible.
EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS
▪ Applications engineering is a title which is descriptive.
▪ Because they describe an objective reality, descriptive core beliefs are simply valid or invalid.
▪ Much of our existing knowledge has been gathered from descriptive studies which lack controls and proper sampling procedures.
▪ The descriptive design is used for community surveys such as need assessment projects.
▪ The board had decided on another candidate, an orthodox pathologist with predominantly clinical and descriptive interests and not an experimentalist.
▪ These are examples of the many questions about politics that require explanation, not mere descriptive facts.
The Collaborative International Dictionary
Descriptive

Descriptive \De*scrip"tive\, a. [L. descriptivus: cf. F. descriptif.] Tending to describe; having the quality of representing; containing description; as, a descriptive figure; a descriptive phrase; a descriptive narration; a story descriptive of the age.

Descriptive anatomy, that part of anatomy which treats of the forms and relations of parts, but not of their textures.

Descriptive geometry, that branch of geometry. which treats of the graphic solution of problems involving three dimensions, by means of projections upon auxiliary planes.
--Davies & Peck (Math. Dict. ) -- De*scrip"tive*ly, adv. -- De*scrip"tive*ness, n.

Related phrases:
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
descriptive

1751, from Late Latin descriptivus, from descript-, past participle stem of describere (see description). Related: Descriptively; descriptiveness.

Wiktionary
descriptive

a. 1 Of or relating to description. 2 (context grammar English) Of an adjective, stating an attribute of the associated noun (as ''heavy'' in ''the heavy dictionary''). 3 (context linguistics English) describing the structure, grammar, vocabulary and actual use of a language. 4 (context science philosophy English) Describing and seeking to classify, as opposed to normative or prescriptive. n. (context grammar English) An adjective (or other descriptive word)

Related phrases:
WordNet
descriptive

  1. adj. serving to describe or inform or characterized by description; "the descriptive variable"; "a descriptive passage" [ant: undescriptive]

  2. concerned with phenomena (especially language) at a particular period without considering historical antecedents; "synchronic linguistics"; "descriptive linguistics" [syn: synchronic] [ant: diachronic]

  3. describing the structure of a language; "descriptive linguistics simply describes language" [ant: prescriptive]

Related phrases:
Wikipedia
Related phrases:

Usage examples of "descriptive".

Ateva is, for instance, the singular, atevi the plural, and the adjectival or descriptive form.

They had rolled up to deal with Caulkens before the innocent attendant could gain a chance to complete his descriptive remarks.

They painted or carved the walls with descriptive and symbolic scenes, and crowded their interiors with sarcophagi, cinerary urns, vases, goblets, mirrors, and a thousand other articles covered with paintings and sculptures rich in information of their authors.

This has given a tinge of picturesque and descriptive imagery to the introductory Epodes which depicture these scenes, and some of the majestic feelings permanently connected with the scene of this animating event.

Big Lil-Lilien Industries of Pennsylvania built the huge machine and a news writer coined the descriptive name which stuck-was a monster delivering a million and a quarter kilowatts of electric power.

It is to this accidental banishment to Devon that we owe the cluster of exquisite pieces descriptive of obsolete rural manners and customs--the Christmas masks, the Twelfth-night mummeries, the morris-dances, and the May-day festivals.

This is at once more descriptive and more megalophonous,--but the alliteration of the text had captivated the vulgar ear of the herd of later commentators.

Christy Poff has written rich, descriptive detail about the time period in the book.

As a Church of England clergyman and as teacher of math and logic at Christ Church, Oxford, the Reverend Dodgson could not believe in blind chance or transcendental puppetry as descriptive of the nature of human life.

Take any descriptive passage in your novel and try to improve it in terms of brevity, selectivity, precision, and imaginative appeal.

In descriptive anatomy I have found little to unlearn, and not a great deal that was both new and important to learn.

Still, no one has yet invented a better descriptive device, and some day the Universal Pantograph will be complete and for the first time man will know definitely what is going to happen next.

The answer is yes if we can find a way of combining a prescriptive with a descriptive premise as the basis of our reasoning to a conclusion.

It serves as the requisite first principle of moral philosophy and enables us to draw prescriptive conclusions from premises that combine prescriptive and descriptive truths.

But that Jesus himself modified and spiritualized the meaning of the phrase when he employed it, even as he did the other contemporaneous language descriptive of the Messianic offices and times, we conclude for two reasons.